Dark Mr. Fripperton 

Sundays are different

On Saturday,
your blood felt weak
and you could hear
the hidden machines
that run the world
whispering your name
and a word that sounded
an awful lot
like complicity,

the sky would one second
be a secure gray
and then the next
be filled with sickly sunlight,
unable to make up
it's damned mind

and you couldn't find
anything you were looking for,
but then,
you weren't looking that hard anyway
so an illusion of balance
was created.

Now it is Sunday.
You are still sad,
still weak,
but something has shifted,
as though you are standing
outside yourself
and observing your misery
with an ounce
of blissful detachment,
as though you've been handed
reams of blank pages
on which it may be possible
to write a happy ending.

Today,
you are filled
with the Ying-Yang
of hope and despair
that must surely be
the very definition
of religion.

On Labor Day weekend

I become a haunted house,
full of ghosts that know no peace,
full of memories that bite and tear,
scratching at the walls of thought.

Full of ghosts that know no peace,
I find them sad and beautiful.
Scratching at the walls of thought,
late summer shadows leave their mark.

I find them sad and beautiful,
adopt them as my own,
these late summer shadows that leave their mark,
pooling beneath lonely trees.

I adopt as my own,
the sorrow of a season's waning days.
Pooling beneath lonely trees,
I become a haunted house.

Distance
(for Amy)

Cars drive by,
not revealing the distance
they will travel,
not saying if they are going home
or running away.

I think of you,
not knowing if you are my home
or a distance I will travel
in vain.

Sometimes I want
a future with you,
a series of days
without end,
stretching toward a point
on the horizon
where we will not go beyond.

Sometimes I try to make you the past,
a face and a voice
slowly being buried
in a grave
dug by time,
slowly turning
into the white bone
of memory.

I realize the choice is mine.
I know that when we stand
at a crossroad,
the signs don't force us to follow them,
don't threaten punishment
or promise reward
for one road taken
over the other.
I want the road
that leads to you.
I want the road
that leads away from you.
But mostly,
I just want to move again,
to end this standing still
and touch the road
with hopeful steps.

Cars drive by.
The distance has your name
on the tip of it's tongue.
I wait to hear it whisper.
I wait for the street signs
to spell out your name.
I wait for the maps
to reveal your borders.

I wait until
the constellations
form your image
in endless space,
light-years of stars
that never burn as bright
as you.